WITH £1,000 of prizes on offer, the competition is sure to be hot in the Worcester News Design A Guy competition to mark the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot

To help schoolchildren entering the event - and anyone else making a Guy for November 5 - we have produced an easy-to-follow guide and some handy hints on the dwindling art.

A Guy can be made very cheaply with household ingredients, recycled packaging, and old clothes. Just don't forget to ask your mum or dad's permission before raiding the larder and clothes cupboard.

l Make the Guy's head by blowing up a round balloon, and covering it in papier-mache. This is easy. Simply tear up newspaper into strips and paint with a glue made of flour and water. Then drape the strips over the balloon and smooth over until you have a head. Build up the papier mache to form a nose, cheekbones, chin and eyebrows. Alternatively, wait for it to dry, then sellotape on a nose made of cardboard. Finish off with more strips of papier-mache. Paint when dry.

l Make hair using an old wig or straw, underneath a suitable hat.

l Hide the Guy's neck under a Tudor frill and ruffles, made out of scrunched up white paper. Complete the collar and cuffs.

l The general shape of your Guy can be created, in much the same way as a scarecrow, with an old coat, waistcoat, shirt, trousers and long stockings stuffed with straw or paper. Simply tie up the ends of the shirt arms and trouser legs once you have filled them up.

l Alternatively you may be able to beg an old pillow off your mum to create a body. And you could make him a backbone, by glueing his head to an old broom handle.

l Don't worry if he doesn't look perfect. Traditionally, the clothes are ill-fitting to give the Guy an awkward and clumsy appearance. The Guy was also given a dark lantern in one hand - made of a decorated tissue box - to hold, as a reminder of how he once crept in the dark cellars below the Houses of Parliament to lay his explosives. The best two Guys made by county schoolchildren - one from the under 11 category and one from the under 16s - will take pride of place on the Round Table's Pitchcroft racecourse bonfire.

The winning entries will also win £400 of book tokens for their schools, £50 each and free entry to the fireworks night event for their family. All other entries will then be added to the fire.

The competition is being run jointly with Worcester Round Table to involve children in the 400th anniversary of the infamous plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, in 1605. It is also raising awareness of the county's links to the conspiracy.

Three of the plotters - Robert Wyntour, his brother Thomas and half-brother John, who were cousins of the leader, Robert Catesby - lived in Huddington Court, near Droitwich.

Thomas Wyntour contacted Guy Fawkes and drew him into the plot because he was an expert in tunnelling and explosives.

The failed event remains one of the most well-known in English history and has been celebrated every year on November 5 for the past four centuries.